Should rock be considered prog just because it's technical?

Guybrush · 11-13-2011, 02:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necromancer

I agree with you as well tore.

Concerning the prog rock genre, there is always the possibility of a new prog band, appearing from out of nowhere.

Progressive rock has expanded in the total number of prog rock bands added to the label, since its peak in the 70s.

And I seriously do not expect progressive rock to ever just stop evolving, but to continually keep on adding other new bands to the prog rock category itself.

I don't see progressive rock, as ever going dormant in my opinion, maybe slowing down a little more and more, as time progresses, and as to how music evolves, through the years in the decades to come.

I agree!

Something which I think is interesting about prog rock is that, as I've pointed out before, there are not that many characteristics unique to prog rock bands. When you look at the early prog such as King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, ELP, they all sound different. If you imagine that you have to look for something in the sound of these bands that make you able to say "this is prog rock because they do this particular thing", there's not that much. You could attempt something like occasional medieval influence which might include Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, Yes, Genesis and King Crimson, but that would exclude Pink Floyd. You could try and say they all made very long songs, but that would exclude Gentle Giant. If you try and say something about general complexity, is The Dark Side of the Moon, the world's most famous prog album, particularly complex?

I think that so far in this thread, most of us will agree that neither is instrumental technicality something that immediately marks a band as prog. As a result, there are not many characteristics that immediately betray a band as being prog at all. It seems a band is prog when it possesses enough characteristics that are thought of as typical of prog, but what the exact combination of such traits are can differ. Thus, the label prog rock could mean different things and indeed there is no strict definition. It's a term made up by thousands of opinions. How could music which is so loosely defined ever stop evolving?

But then, although bands start out unique, as time progresses, new tricks turn into old tricks and new bands start to mimic the old which can make newer prog bands sound more similar to eachother and the old than the old did to eachother. So, the amount of bands that sound more samey will only increase. That doesn't mean prog won't churn out new sounds and ideas.

edit :

I think the closest you get to finding characteristics that define a band as being prog is that at some point, they've meddled with untraditional time signatures. That's just about something all prog rockers do, although that trait is of course not unique to prog rock.